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Clinton to Return All Hsu-Tainted Money

By Patrick Healy September 10, 2007 7:37 pmSeptember 10, 2007 7:37 pm

Updated report: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign announced tonight that it would return approximately $850,000 to about 260 donors who had been recruited or tapped by Norman Hsu, the disgraced Clinton campaign fundraiser who recently fled arrest and is now under investigation for his fundraising practices.

The Clinton campaign also disclosed tonight that it had decided to begin running criminal background checks on its bundlers — the dozens of individuals who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors on behalf of a candidate, as Mr. Hsu had done for Mrs. Clinton. A Clinton adviser said that “vigorous additional vetting” of the bundlers, including the criminal checks, would begin this week, and that the campaign was hiring additional staff for that purpose.

Mr. Hsu’s mounting legal problems have created the Clinton campaign’s first major in-house controversy. While Mr. Hsu donated $600,000 to an array of candidates over the last three years, he had become first and foremost a Clinton fundraiser for this presidential cycle — one of the so-called “Hillraisers,” who held events for Mrs. Clinton and aided her in the highly competitive money race with a leading Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

At the end of June, Mrs. Clinton had about $45 million on hand for her presidential campaign; the loss of $850,000 amounts to less than 2 percent of that sum, but, her advisers say, it is a relatively sizable amount that would have been welcomed for the expensive television advertising purchases ahead.

The Clinton adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal campaign deliberations, said that Mrs. Clinton “did not want the Hsu issue to be a distraction for the campaign, and wants to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“We wanted to get a few days ahead of any problems that come out, rather than be a few days behind them,” the adviser said.

The adviser declined to comment on whether the Clinton campaign had determined that Mr. Hsu violated federal election law by recruiting people to donate to the Clinton campaign and then paying those people to cover their donations. Some generous donors associated with Mr. Hsu have been revealed to be people who appear to be from fairly modest backgrounds.

The Times reported on Sunday that a company controlled by Mr. Hsu has paid a total of more than $100,000 to at least nine people who made campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton and others through Mr. Hsu.

The F.B.I. has begun investigating whether Mr. Hsu paid people to give money to Mrs. Clinton and other candidates, The Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press reported. At least some of those donors may have been investors in a shadowy business venture that Mr. Hsu had been running, according to reports.

“In light of recent events and allegations that Mr. Norman Hsu engaged in an illegal investment scheme, we have decided out of an abundance of caution to return the money he raised for our campaign,” said Howard Wolfson, a Clinton campaign spokesman.

A spokesman for former Senator John Edwards’s presidential campaign said that it began doing criminal background checks on bundlers after Mr. Hsu’s troubles came to light.

Mr. Hsu has been hospitalized since last week in Colorado, where he surfaced after failing to show up for a California court hearing days before. Mr. Hsu had been wanted in California since 1992 when he missed another court date, and apparently fled to his native Hong Kong, instead of face up to three years in prison for a fraud conviction. (More background on Mr. Hsu here.)

The Clinton campaign made its announcement around 6:40 p.m., shortly after the network evening news shows had begun on the East Coast. The timing was roughly the same as on Aug. 29 when Clinton advisers disclosed they were donating to charity the $23,000 Mr. Hsu had made in personal contributions to Clinton campaign accounts. Clinton aides, who have been trying to contain the political damage from the Hsu revelations, have been monitoring the number of stories that the network evening news has run on Mr. Hsu — only a handful thus far.

Mr. Wolfson’s full statement on the issue follows:

In light of recent events and allegations that Mr. Norman Hsu engaged in an llegal investment scheme, we have decided out of an abundance of caution to return the money he raised for our campaign.

This week approximately 260 donors will receive refunds totaling approximately $850,000 from the campaign.

Mr. Hsu donated to numerous charities and more than two dozen candidates and committees. Despite conducting a thorough review of public records, our campaign, like these others, were unaware of Mr. Hsu’s decade-plus old warrant.

To help ensure against this type of situation in the future, our campaign will also institute vigorous additional vetting procedures on our bundlers, including criminal background checks. In any instances where a source of a bundler’s income is in question, the campaign will take affirmative steps to verify its origin.

Well, there are just so many Hilraisers out there that you can’t check all of them out, you know. I mean, uhh.., that because somebody’s going to bundle up a mil or so, we have to be better at vetting and checking these people out. And, promise, promise, we won’t be taking any more tainted money, you’ll see. Right?

Now is the time for Hillary to also return campaign contributions made by MoveOn.org (and their followers) to distance herself from the “Betray Us” advertisement which she has yet to denounce. Does she honestly believe that the good General would deliberately deceive? For shame!

Huh, why the higher standard for Dems?? It’s ridiculous. Bush never returned more than the few thousand Abramoff gave him directly; he pointedly refused to return hundreds of thousands Abramoff raised (supposedly from others) as a Bush Pioneer.

It is a great right wing conspiracy.Here we go again ,I knew nothing about this blah blah blah.Hey ,just maybe there is something to be said about lobbyist and special interests…no they are just teachers and firefighters,like Hillory said.

C’mon people. I’m no fan of Hillary, but at least on this issue, she appears to be doing the right thing(whether or not it was because some big scandal was about to break or not, well, at least the issue is put to rest, regardless of the motives behind this move).

Still. . . Senator Clinton has no reason to call anybody naive now. If a 1 million dollar bundler slips with a criminal record slips under your nose, well, that’s some naivete there.

Which is to say, if Clinton supporters don’t bring up Obama’s slim Senate years I won’t bring up this and the fact that Obama has more cumulative elective years than HRC. Call it the Embarassing Naivete Compromise.

We are becoming more like Mexico every day and I don’t mean all the mexicans both living here legally and illegakky. Mexico is still a 3rd world country because of its corrupt political system. Is the USA far behind, not with politicians who are in the pocket of these guys. Does anyone really believe this guy Hsu didn’t want something in return for his money machine. While we are at lets see how much money he raised for Boxer and Feinstein. It’s a well known fact that Senator Feinsteins husband had lots of business dealings in China. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Lets have a congressional inquiry befor the elections to get to the bottom of this and expose these hypocrites on both sides of the aisle.

Something is very wrong here. The American people deserve answers, not a press release timed to miss the nightly news cycle.

Hillary supporters, please wake up and help protect our Democracy. Demand a full and immediate investigation now.

Where is the reform? Are we going to turn a blind eye to this corruption? Any candidate that takes this amount of tainted cash – $850,000 – knows where its coming from and needs to be seriously questioned.

The “campaign Manager” must consider resigning as this sort of emabarassmnets have embattled both Clintos and should not be allowed to continue if both, the campaign and the future (Clinton) administration is to be successful in some significant changes that the electorate and America anticipates. This incident is much similar to the ‘last minute pardons’ (2001). Why did not sme one check on the donors, if not a buddhist monk but another far easterner? Some one relaxed too much.

The stench of corruption follows the Clintons everywhere. Now it turns out a bilked investor warned her in June about Hsu, but she ordered her stormtroopers to stifle the news. What did she know and when did she know it and who did she instruct to deny it? Enquiring progressive minds want to know.

I cannot believe some of these posts. Higher Standard for Dems???? This should of been exposed years ago, but the Liberal biased media has ignored the obvious ties between the Clintons and Hsu(China). The Clintons have been in bed with anyone who throws money their way, Morality be damned.
It is time some of you stop being led around by liberal tactics, get a brain, and do your own research.
I’m sure the Hsu/Clinton ties have nothing to do with Clinton approving the export of radiation hardened chips in November of 1996 or the November 1996 waiver by Clinton to allow money donated to the DNC by convicted chinagate figures – Charlie Yah-Lin Trie and

Hillary’s continuing ethics problems are only the small and just a tiny tip of the iceburg.
However, more often than not, the on air media is doing it’s best to make sure the average voter knows nothing or as little as possible about it.
She has a contributor just indicted for funny dealing from India. All her under the table and corrupt dealing seem to involve people from China an India – the biggest outsourcing places. Along with hillary’s love of free trade there is a very ugly story underneath just waiting for some smart and hungry reporter looking to make a name for his or herself to dig around about. Let’s just hope the unseemliness of her real dealings are uncovered long before the Primaries.

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